Thursday, March 24, 2016

New Beginnings and Older Works

Somehow, my schedule has fallen apart.  January of 2015, I was the picture of organization, the reason I was able to produce a 140,000 word book in eight months.  This year, I'm losing it.  After an initial strong start with Darling, I've had a lot of road blocks, in my personal life and in my writing one.  Besides the soul searching of wondering if I should really be a writer, if this is really the right thing to be writing, and what on earth I'm going to do with a story that is far better than the writer writing it, I'm three months into my year without much book to show for it.

Queen of Time is riddled with problems, so many that I sometimes want to just scrap it and start over.  Wanting to finish Darling before embroiling myself in editing, I keep on pushing it to the back burner.  Today, on an impulse, I grabbed a chapter that has a lot of transitional, important material, and a notebook and started over with the chapter.  Different things happening, different questions being asked, different character development.  If it works out, I will continue.

It's amazing how much of my story hinges on King Uther's reaction to Gwen coming to Camelot.  For any who don't know, Gwen, through a series of events, ends up time traveling from the twenty-first century into Camelot.  This being the case, one of the first things I had to plot out was the reaction people would have.  First, I set up a history with the Crossers (she is not the first one) and the people of Camelot.  I made her what they viewed as the fulfillment of a prophesy, a YA cliche that is tired and old at the moment.  I'm hoping I can remedy that particular story line at some point.  Secondly, I had to picture how the people in Camelot who have been waiting for this fulfillment would view Gwen, a short bespectacled teen who doesn't seem to have a stitch of confidence and a whole lot of fear.  This reaction has morphed three different ways as I've disliked each one after fleshing it out over a few chapters.  My latest take (as of today), is the likelihood that if King Uther doesn't feel she is the one they are waiting for, he would likely not want his people to know who she was because of the Crosser's history of bad blood with the people of Camelot.  This means he would keep Gwen at the castle under outwardly false pretenses.  Gwen, being the girl who refuses to lie, would obviously have difficulty with this.  And thus, a different story than I had this morning is a born.  A lie she has to maintain, a life she is trying to get back to out of her strong sense of not wanting to change the past, and a possible link to someone she doesn't want to be linked with (spoilers!!!).

As I said though, King Uther's decision makes all the difference in the book.  If he forced her to try and go back through the Doorway, she would die.  If he gave her over to the people out of anger, she would die.  If he put her in prison, she would die.  If he sold her off as a slave to another kingdom, she would probably, well, die.

After the king, how Gwen reacts to what happens becomes just as important.  With some of the characteristics shown at the beginning of the book, she could be the kind of person who would just hide in her room and never come out.  Then, she wouldn't meet the people she meets, form the relationships she does, go through the life changing events that she does, and ultimately, bring about the things that bring the book to the climax.

The story is going to need work.  A lot of it.  And it might not pan out at all.  The good news is, I was able to put my story in a whole new perspective today which is not an easy thing.  I was able to write a questioning, logically deducting Gwen like I haven't written before, a shier girl than I'm used to but one who actually felt likable.

Hopefully, this means I can get back to my long overdue edits for Queen of Time.  I think it has the potential to be an awesome story.  I'm just going to have to become the writer to fulfill that potential.

Being the goal oriented person that I am, I came up with some goals of what I want for Queen of Time more than anything else, mostly things I haven't been able to accomplish to my satisfaction in other stories.


  • Gwen to be a very different heroine than I normally write but still likable and relate-able. 
  • The world building to feel rich and visible.  Being able to take readers to my picture of Camelot would be awesome!
  • Having a cast of different and believeable guys
  • Having good chemistry between my female and male main character
  • A complicated enough storyline to keep the reader guessing but not confused.

Seeing my goals here makes it sound like my book should be so easy.  Unfortunately, I am not good at writing anything on this list.  There's no good way for me to ease into it with a book of this caliber.  I'm just going to write, and rewrite until I'm done!

-Anna Leigh

5 comments:

  1. Wow, sounds like there's a lot on your plate right now! I hope you find a way to plow ahead and gain some momentum soon!

    -M.A.

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    1. Thanks, I am gaining momentum this week. I really hope it lasts!

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  2. Girl...we need to talk. Video chat soon?

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